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 | Strangely, I think I'm going to miss Iain Duncan Smith. While they were doing the retrospectives on his time as leader of HMLO, they played, obviously, the bit about not underestimating the determination of a quiet man, which was strange and wrong and sounded like he was doing Jackanory. However, it was the follow-up, where the quiet man was supposed to be turning up the volume, that did for me. He actually couldn't get any louder on the final word, so "volume" slides off into a slightly hiccuppy diminuendo. Just adorable.
Also, the footage of his "own medicine? Suits you, sir" revolt against John major shows him possessed of maybe the best combover ever, He looks a lot less like a chipmunk, but a fair bit more like a member of the Chamberlain cabinet, so you pays your money, really.
So who are you backing? Tell me.
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| Wednesday, October 29, 2003 |
| The canonisation of Mother Theresa, or more precisely the unseemly rush to canonise Mother Theresa, is a disturbing thing. Although the more lachrymose and sentimental aspects of religion tend only to reach the ears of we modern metrofaithuals through tiny ceramics of crucified kittens advertised in the Radio Times, it boots us to recall that a shitload of people take this kind of thing terribly seriously, and this “Who Wants to be a Saint?” approach must be sending some bloody odd signals.
Not least because Mother Theresa’s saintliness remains arguable as a figure of speech, much less an actual according-to-Hoyle proof of membership. This article repeats some of the criticisms levelled at the lady’s ministry on Earth. Reading these statue-toppling pieces on the nation's favourite nun always makes me think of Zoe Bean having to rewrite her essay on Sister Mary Assumpta overnight in light of the revelation that she has been selling the poor children she purported to take care of to sweatshops for cheap labour. In a move reminiscent of rushed essays since time immemorial, she finds that she can alter her conclusion without actually changing the grammatical structure at all.
“And thus, when considering every factor, I must conclude that Sister Mary Assumpta is…..evil…and we should….. hate her.”
Still, the Pope probably doesn’t have long left in the job, so we owe it to him on the grounds of his long service to indulge the odd foible. God knows, that seems to be the operating principle of Mother Church at present.
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| The idea of a biography in film of Sylvia Plath is a pretty dire one to begin with, so part of me is quite glad that it seems to have been handled appropriately badly. Movies about poets are bfundamentally a bad idea, as the rather limited actors produced by Hollywood struggle to portray characters brighter than they are. Thus, Neo works in The Matrix because, barring a bit of shadow play at the start about him having some sort of useful skills, he is pigshit thick, and his utility lies in his supernatural ability/power of will/nice coat. Matt Damon as a genius - less good. This is not, to be fair, entirely the fault of the actors - how do you communicate the signifiers of being very clever indeed to the audience? Mainly by talking fast and writing on blackboards a lot, apparently.
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| Monday, October 20, 2003 |
| And then, on the train back, three yokels piled onto the tube at King’s Cross St. P. I don’t use the term lightly, but there really isn’t a better one. Long straight hair, denim jackets, four days of beard growth. There was a degree of confusion over where the tube was actually going, followed by an enthusiastic conversation on the benefits of various forms of music. Hairy metal, not shockingly, of the snakily white variety. Then George Michael. It was only when they got onto the Grumbleweeds, complete with a rendition of the theme song, that I became firm in my conviction that they were taking the piss. To be exact, they were spoofing their own status as hair metallers from Suffolk, despite being hair metallers from Suffolk.
Pomokels. These are the end times.
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| I realise I’ve been a bit slow to realise this, but as David Blaine is removed from his David Blaine box, it occurs to me that he has been in there 44 days, and has only left with medical assistance. This makes him an utterly shit escapologist.
Think about it. Houdini could get out of a glass box full of water in a couple of minutes, even chained up and in a straitjacket. Christ, I could escape from a Perspex box in 44 days. You could eat a Perspex box in that time, and I for one am sorry he did not, as it would have added fun to an otherwise deadly dull spectacle.
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| This is from NTK, so in all probability you have already read it, but by God it bears repeating. The Barefoot Doctor gets a good shoeing from the forces of reason.
I’m not quite sure what inspires such fundamental, primal, atavistic loathing in me for the Barefoot Doctor. Part of it is no doubt the fact that he is coining it by hawking mass-produced herbal remedies to the credulous and stupid (but is this righteous anger or jealousy?). Another part is the smugness radiating from every pore of his no-homeopathic-cure-for-baldness scalp. A third is without a doubt that the New Age, however laudable its aims and however efficacious its distillate of passiflora, seems intent on war against both the comprehensibility and the beauty of the English language, choked as it is with incontinent wittering about creativity, negativity, positivity – not everything has to be an abstract noun, you muppets.
Ultimately, though, I suspect that my ambivalence lies not in the idea of homeopathy and what we like in tribute to Edward Said to call “Eastern medicine” – after all, folk remedies have often survived for centuries because they have at least some utility among the folk – but that the Observer only saw fit to get an expert on it in when one turned up with white skin and an English education. In his cultural appropriation and desire to commoditise every aspect of any cultural experience promising profundity or spirituality, in doing so crushing every aspect of the alien from it, the Barefoot Doctor is the patron saint of backpackers, and must be reviled as such.
The revelation that his range of unguents includes a “Darkness Remover” candle is, however, a thing of beauty…
His web presence is pure evil also, down to the infuriating use of flash and unnecessary music loop.
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| Sunday, October 19, 2003 |
| Another word on travelling. Finding myself in the single facing seats normally reserved for the elderly and disabled, with a lost boy opposite me (not lost in the “is this the Luton train” sense, I hasten to add) staring without any other point of visual interest (hood up – no peripheral vision) at me, I decided to while away the time and ward away the gaze of the damned with a bit of laptop-fiddling.
I love my new laptop, and am tip-tapping away happily right now. It’s cheap, but most definitely cheerful.
However, it has taught me a cruel but vital lesson. The Thing is a computer game designed to engineer fear, anxiety and tension. Also, it is a game in which careful management of the emotions of your team means the difference between good neighbourly feelings and being shot to death before so much as seeing a beasty.
Combine these factors and you get a game you really shouldn’t try to play using a touchpad. Really. Trust me on this. It isn’t pretty.
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| Thursday, October 16, 2003 |
| Power cut at the office yesterday – the electromagnetic fire doors swing shut, creating the impression that it is a Friday afternoon and time to go home. As T. and I Metal Gear out for a cigarette while civilisation was restored, we heard a sound akin to the beating of mighty wings and a Chinook clumped past. It was then that I realised that the problem was clearly zombies. Still, shortly after the lights flickered on again, the computers groaned and gear-shifted into life, and the only thing to show for the loss was the delayed arrival of an invitation by email to join the many Americans enlarging their penises. For what, exactly? Quoits?
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| Radio can be a confusing and disorienting thing. For example, when one leaves one’s post in the middle of the Archers. When you return, you find yourself listening to the Afternoon Play, but it takes a while to percolate. You don’t listen to the Archers religiously, and so assume that the characters are just a family you have not encountered for a while – because their middle-class problems are the same middle-class problems that preoccupy every citizen of Ambridge not actually toiling in the fields. You only realise your mistake as the first of an interminable sequence of soliloquys about how much Elizabeth misses Richard.
Radio has strange powers. Or possibly I have strange powers to confuse radio. Whenever I listen to it something breaks. I have mentioned previously the Crazy Christian dead son car crash, which was either perhaps the most brilliant piece fakery ever to be perpetuated against a radio presenter, the most brilliant piece of fakery ever to be perpetuated by a radio presenter not involving Bruce Willis, or the most jaw-droppingly awkward moment ever. Well, I tuned into the Nation’s Favourite Uncle Radio 1 yesterday, to be confronted with Mark Radcliffe, formerly a model of broadcasting professionalism, found himself, without pressure, employing what Capalert would probably call the second-foulest of all foul words with regard to his partner’s viewing habits. Clearly it’s a power I have. Look forward to The Cunting Today Programme.
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| Sunday, October 12, 2003 |
| Weekend travel always leaves me exhausted. It's usually quite a nice feeling - becasue I am usually travelling back from a weekend in Righton-by-Sea. It's a short journey, I can wriggle my toes a little, and there is no London to navigate through to get home.
This time round, it was a long trip, with a tube journey and a big-ass backpack. Not good. Still, more of that later. Night night.
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| Saturday, October 11, 2003 |
| In honour of Jeans for Genes Day, I was going to declare this week Taffeta for Catheters week. However, events seen rather to have overtaken me. Therefore it gives me great pleasure to declare OH SHIT IT’S A TIGER week.
So far, admittedly, things have been quiet on the fuck me a tiger front, but we confidently expect this to be a temporary status. After all, with the precedent of the savaging of Roy Horn, demonstrating once and for all that real magicians don’t lock themselves in boxes, they pick fights with tigers, and the discovery of a half-Bengal, half-Siberian, all-oh my sweet lord a tiger tiger in an apartment in New York, the only way is likely to be up. As in, up a tree and hope it isn’t hungry.
Thinking of raising your own tiger? Here are some suggestions. Apparently, an adult tiger consumes $150 of meat a week, and should be given the opportunity to eat brains, spine, eyes and other part of the animal for a balanced diet. Anything I said at this point about our capital’s fine fast food establishments would be at best a jade’s trick.
Still and all, I am interested by the surmise that Roy Horn’s mistake was that, when the tiger batted at his arm, he stumbled and thus showed weakness. I have two problems with this. Faced with a companionable swipe from a 500-pound killing machine, I would say that anything up to and including catching a cab to the next state would be neither weak nor in any fashion reprehensible. Second up, the guy is wearing a white tuxedo, he’s got bouffant hair and a little soul-patch, he’s pushing 60 and still turning out every night to chainsaw the lady. The tiger has seen all this hundreds of times, he knows every trick by heart, he knows every thunderflash and secret compartment, and he’s sharing a stage with Siegfried and fucking Roy. The tiger might be entitled to think of almost anything in this setup, “dude, this is weak”.
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